


Open 24 Hours

by Flyting



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Gold needs a drink and a hug, Humor, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5360105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>As tempting as it sounded to simply curl up in the middle of the road and wait for death, perhaps leaving his body as some sort of macabre romantic statement just on the edge of town, he was cursed with, among other things, a practical mind. </i><br/>Or, Gold immediately after being kicked across the town line by Belle in S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open 24 Hours

**Author's Note:**

> Written immediately post-banishing in S4.

It’s past midnight when Gold’s aching feet finally touch pavement.

He drags himself, half limping-half stumbling, into the parking lot of that wretched little dive that was the closest thing to pass for civilization in the woods outside of the Storybrooke city limits. Not that he’s in any position to complain. Sheer bloody-mindedness was the only thing that had kept him going for the past mile. He’d even eat something that came out of Granny’s kitchen at the moment.

The words ‘The Lobster House – 24 Hours’ flash neon overhead as he pushes open the front door, tossing the gnarled tree branch he had been using as a makeshift cane into the bushes as he goes. Inside, he’s immediately hit by the smell of tepid seafood and despair.

There’s a sparse handful of people at this hour, clustered together in booths or dotted along the counter, and none of them spare more than a casual glance for the panting, disheveled-looking man in the expensive suit who hobbles his way up to the counter and collapses into a seat. His feet begin to throb in shoes that had been selected more with style in mind than comfort.

Gold catches sight of himself reflected in the glass behind the counter. Reflexively thinks that he should at least try to smooth his hair down- he looks like he lost a fight with a tree- and then decides that on second thought, he doesn’t give a damn. His appearance can go fuck itself. There’s an entire laundry list of things that can go fuck themselves, as far as he’s concerned. He’s had several hours to work on it. He files ‘his appearance’ somewhere in the middle, between ‘walking’ and ‘whatever was making that noise the last half mile’.

Somewhere after the first hour of lying in the street choking on his own tears, his panic-stricken mind had finally kicked back on and he had realized that Belle had surely long-since gone home. She wasn’t coming back for him. There would be no last-minute reprieve, no tearful reluctant forgiveness- not for him.

He was alone. As tempting as it sounded to simply curl up in the middle of the road and wait for death, perhaps leaving his body as some sort of macabre romantic statement just on the edge of town, he was cursed with, among other things, a practical mind.

A broken-heart couldn’t kill him. Not really. And death by exposure took far too long. He didn’t have the stamina for it.

He would need food and shelter, and unless he wanted to end up sleeping in the middle of the woods that meant he was going to have to start walking. As he did, the tears and despair had eventually burnt out, giving way to a kind of empty numbness. Then irritation. Now, he was just _angry_. Aching, bone-deep anger- at himself, at Belle, at Hook, at the whole wretched universe in which this was his life.

For most of the night, food and rest had been his main thoughts; the need to keep moving providing a blissfully single-minded sense of focus that edged out any less-immediate concerns. Now, spotting the line of glass bottles neatly lined up against the back wall, he suddenly has an even better idea.

He catches the attention of the man behind the counter and orders a double.

He finishes it in one large swallow, cheap whiskey burning the back of his throat, and signals the man for another.

“Rough night?” the man next to him says, with warm, sticky friendliness.

Gold pauses half-way though his second drink, turning a slow eye towards the speaker. He’s paunchy, middle-aged, and wearing tie with cartoon characters on it. The kind of dull, maudlin drunk that thinks stating the obvious passes for conversation. Gold makes room for him on the list, just above ‘walking’.

“You could say that,” Gold says carefully, every syllable laced with heated distaste.  He swallows what’s left in the glass, hoping the man is smarter than he looks and will let that be the end of it.

Of course, he really should have learned by now that he’s not that lucky.

“Yeah? ‘Cause no offense friend, but you look terrible.” He extends a hand across the empty seat between them. “I’m Dave, by the way.”

Gold wraps both hands around his glass, staring straight ahead.

Last week, Belle had talked him into watching a documentary about the universe. Galaxies, planets, supernovas- all the ridiculous things people without magic had invented to explain their world. He’d found the whole thing a bit silly, but she had wanted to watch it and so they did.

Suddenly, he finds himself thinking of black holes, and wondering if it’s possible to reach a sort of event horizon of despair. The only person left in this world who he loves has banished him, and it’s his own fucking fault. He is alone in a strange land. Crippled, powerless, tired and sore, and completely without magic.  On top of that, he has nowhere to go- no car, no phone, less than a hundred dollars in his wallet, and this mawkish idiot _won’t stop talking to him._

Oh, Gold _could_ kill him of course. He’s not so tired that he couldn’t smash the glass in his hand and cut the man’s throat with its shards before anyone could stop him. But he’d be arrested, and he doesn’t fancy prison in a world without magic.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back to the town line and die of exposure.

Laughter threatens to bubble up out of his throat, but he forces it down because he knows that if he starts laughing now he’ll never stop. _He needs to think- he needs a plan-_

Undeterred by his unwitting brush with death, Dave withdraws his hand. “Tell you what,” he says, “Let me buy you a drink.”

He needs another drink.

And Gold thinks that the alcohol might finally be starting to affect him, because he says, “That’s the most welcome thing you’ve said all night.”   
  


* * *

  
“You know, it’s- it’s not like she didn’t _know_ who she was getting when she married me,” Gold finds himself saying, some time later. He’s well into his third- or maybe it was the fourth- drink, and the edges of the world have gone pleasantly soft and blurry. “I never lied- I am not a liar. I never lied about what I am. But she just refused to listen.”

“That’s women for you,” Dave nods in condolence.

“It’s like- she’s got this idea of who I am- who knows where she got it from- and no matter how hard I try I can’t- I can’t be that man. I tried- ”

“I feel you, buddy. So she kicked you out of the house, huh?”

“Out of the whole _town_ ,” Gold says, gesturing with his near-empty glass in what he thinks is the general direction of Storybrooke.

“...Jeez.”

“ _Yeah_.”

“Can she do that?”

“She did. _Which_ ,” he sets his glass back down hard for emphasis, “Was _completely uncalled for.”_

“Yeah, seriously.”

“I mean, I _made_ that town. It was _my town, my curse._ And she just… _banishes me._ How dare- who does she think she is?”

“Who knows, man?”

“And for what? I mean- so I was going to kill _Captain-fucking_ - _Hook_. Name me _one person_ who’s been in a room with the man for more than five minutes who _hasn’t_ wanted to kill him.”

“Captain Hook, huh?”

“I was doing everyone a favor,” Gold says, generously.

“…Sounds like it, buddy. Sounds like it.”  
  
Gold was revising his opinion of Dave. Perhaps he could go somewhere closer to the bottom of the list. The man was a fantastic listener.

“Tell you what though,” Dave said with childishly exaggerated calm, peeling a few bills out of his wallet and setting them on the counter. “It’s getting late- can I drop you off somewhere?”  
  
Somewhere in the back of Gold’s mind, in the part that is always, always quietly ticking away, spinning plans and counter-measures out of the air, an idea has been taking shape.  
  
“Yes, thank you,” Gold says obligingly. The mirror behind the bar shows him a man with a thin-lipped smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

He follows Dave out to his car- a rusted sedan strewn with the occasional outdated political bumper sticker- wincing a little as his feet voice their displeasure.

“You alright there, buddy?” Dave says as the engine turns over. “That limp looks like it hurts.”

“Just an old… war injury,” Gold says, leaning his head back against the seat and closing his eyes. The world has begun to swim drunkenly, and it’s threatening to give him a headache.  
  
Dave’s interest piques. “Yeah? Which war?”  


“The Ogre Wars. The second Ogre Wars, actually. Although I doubt you’d remember them- it’s been centuries.”  
  
Dave laughs. A shrill giggle climbs its way out of Gold’s throat, and Dave slowly stops laughing.

They drive in silence, all while that little part of Gold’s mind goes _tick, tick, tick._

He waits until the forest has long since swallowed up the last light from the main road. When he is sure that there is nothing around them but miles of trees, Gold pulls out the steak knife he had pocketed back at the diner.  
  
“Stop the car,” he says without opening his eyes.  
  
“What?”  
  
Gold digs the point of the knife through Dave’s cheap suit, into his ribcage. “Stop the car.”  
  
The brakes squeak and the car lurches to a stop. Gold’s eyes slit open.  
  
“Whoa there buddy-“  
  
“Call me that one more time and I’ll cut out your tongue.” 

There was an audible snap as Dave’s mouth snapped shut.

“Now get out. And leave your wallet.”

Dave fumbles at the catch on the door before half-falling out of the car, landing on his arse in the middle of the road and scrabbling backwards.

Gold slid across the front seat, pulled the door shut and locked it. After a moment of struggle with the unfamiliar gearshift, the car began to move.

It was hardly the solution he would have chosen, but he has to make the best of his circumstances.

The car would get him into town and provide him with a place to sleep off the last of the whiskey. In the morning he could use the man’s credit card to arrange for better transportation.

He needed to get to New York.

If he was any judge, and Gold fancied that he’d become a bit of an expert on walking long distances tonight, it would take the man at least an hour to get back to the diner. Gold very nearly feels sorry for him. Nearly.

Hopefully the man had thought to wear sensible shoes.

 


End file.
